Holes Remain In NCAA Investigation, UConn Response

October 10, 2010|By DAVE ALTIMARI

Not even a month after Nate Miles signed to play basketball for UConn, the Kansas City attorney hired by the athletic department to make sure the school didn't run afoul of NCAA regulations was grilling Miles about his relationship with agent Josh Nochimson.

Attorney Rick Evrard's notes from that July 23, 2008, interview provide a window into just how concerned UConn was with the Miles/Nochimson relationship. Evrard asked Miles if anyone had ever handed him money; Miles denied it.

Evrard also asked Miles to describe his relationship with Nochimson, a former manager for the UConn's men's basketball team. Miles said he "didn't know what or why [Nochimson] is involved" and that he had "talked to Josh one time."

But Evrard wasn't convinced, and he alerted university officials that the relationship was an "outstanding issue." Within two months, Miles was expelled from UConn after he was arrested for violating a restraining order, but the depths of the relationship between the mercurial basketball player and the former team manager was only just beginning to surface.

Hundreds of calls and text messages between the school's basketball coaches and both Miles and Nochimson would follow. University officials have told the NCAA that regulations were broken and that team representatives made illegal contact with Miles and, as it turns out, with several others players between 2007 and 2009.

In its 562-page response to NCAA allegations, the university cites the 60 interviews it conducted and the 350,000 calls and texts that were reviewed over a four-year period as proof of how extensive its self-investigation was.

But missing from the report are the two key players — neither Nochimson nor Miles cooperated with the university's investigation. Miles' only comments were the cryptic notes saved by Evrard.

School officials also failed to mention what probably will be a key defense for former director of basketball operations Beau Archibald: During the time of Miles' recruitment, the athletic department had only one person working in its NCAA compliance department, and that person was overseeing more than 20 athletic programs.

In his 40-page response to charges that he lied to investigators about illegal phone calls to Miles, Archibald argues not only that the 113 calls and 181 texts permissible, but that they were authorized by a compliance unit that was so short-staffed it asked for his help in gathering Miles' academic records.

Pittsburgh attorney C. James Zeszutek wrote in Archibald's defense: "In the fall semester of 2007 the University's Athletics Office of Compliance was woefully understaffed" and therefore Archibald was "pressed into service to assist compliance" with the delicate issue of trying to make sure Miles was academically eligible to play.

Marielle vanGelder, who was working in the compliance unit, is quoted in Zeszutek's briefs. She admitted she was the only person working in the unit from October to December 2007.

"I was. I was by myself. Umm, we only had, uh, I was the only full-time person at that time,'' vanGelder told investigators.

Alicia Alford was hired in to work in the compliance unit in January 2008, but Archibald continued to work on the Miles case. Zeszutek said in his response that it is difficult to understand how university officials expected Archibald to collect information about Miles without contacting him.

Archibald resigned last May after a meeting with UConn officials, just days before NCAA investigators accused him of failing to conduct himself "in accordance with the honesty and integrity associated with the administration [by] providing false and misleading information to the NCAA enforcement staff and institution."

UConn officials, in their response to the allegations, said the school's investigation did not conclude that Archibald knowingly provided false or misleading information to NCAA investigators concerning contact with Nochimson or Ronald Shade, then a business associate of Nochimson's. Records show Archibald called Shade at least 16 times despite telling investigators he didn't know him.

The same charges of providing false information were leveled against UConn assistant coach Patrick Sellers, who also resigned just before the allegations were made public. Sellers is now working in China.

Sellers appears to take a different tack than Archibald in defending himself. He wrote the NCAA a letter detailing his dreams of playing for the Los Angeles Lakers and coaching basketball.

In the rest of his 21-page response, Brooklyn attorney Sean O'Leary acknowledged that Sellers made illegal calls to Miles and/or Nochimson and also acknowledged that he gave complimentary tickets to an AAU coach who was his basketball teammate at Central Connecticut State University.